


i am that i am

by AKL



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Depression, Gen, Past Violence, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 11:11:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20814173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKL/pseuds/AKL
Summary: Without anyone around him, Waylon looked tiny. He looked like the kind of person who was constantly searching for a chair to rest in, like an old man. His youth was only given away by his face, even though his expression was that of someone at wit's end. At the time, Miles had wondered if he had a similar exhaustion about himself.Now he's certain he does.





	i am that i am

  
  


Miles knows that he's bitter. 

He's been told his whole life to  _ quit being so cynical,  _ which has only ever succeeded in pissing him off more. He's cynical, and the things he's gone through, more recently than not, haven't helped any. Naturally he's referring to Murkoff. Nowadays everything's about  _ fucking _ Murkoff.

They never had to go on the lamb. Waylon seemed to expect that they would, but once the news broke out it didn't matter how high up Murkoff's control went. The public screamed for its end, and Miles loved every  _ second _ of it, like a murder victim's relative watching the killer swing at the end of a state-commissioned rope. 

They didn't get much physical compensation from the dissolve of the corporation, and what could they receive that'd possibly be enough, anyway? In Miles' opinion, he could've bled Murkoff dry, taken every last cent there was to offer, and it still would never have been enough. As far as he knows, Waylon agrees. What could they be given that would make up for the things they had to see? What they had to  _ endure? _ God could come lift the both of them up to heaven right now, but even that wouldn't cover it, because Miles has already paid the ultimate price.

When did prophets cease to exist? When did God cut that final thread? Was it something they did? 

_ Probably something we didn't,  _ Miles thinks, because God has always seemed like such a stickler. The idols people have made, that  _ Murkoff _ made, he grimly reminds himself, don't seem to be much different.

"Miles?" A voice gently cuts in.

He spares a glance in Waylon's direction. The man's shivering, and Miles has never quite been able to figure out if it's because of nerves or some perpetual coldness. His hair is curling messily over his brow, and his eyes are as dark and sad as they always are. 

Miles wants to strangle him. 

"What is it, Park."

Waylon isn't looking at him. "I just…" he sighs. "Do you want to eat lunch together?"

The first time Miles saw Waylon (excluding when the bastard stole his car) had been outside the courtroom. 

Waylon had crutches, and his family, although he didn't really seem to be favoring one over the other. 

Miles had been alone. There was nobody to shelter him from all the eyes stitching onto his face, onto his hands… onto where his damn fingers used to be. The trial didn't bring him much gratification, even as he watched Murkoff's beady-eyed lawyers get slammed by the prosecutors, and that surprised him. Maybe it was because no matter what ugly things were confessed to, he never felt all the eyes peel away. 

Did anyone ever ask the ten lepers who gave them the disease? 

_ "Miles?"  _

"No," Miles snaps, moving his hands out of sight. "I don't care what your shrink is telling you, Park, I'm not gonna be your friend. Give it up already."

It wasn't until both he and Waylon were put in the same funny farm that they saw each other again. Without anyone around him, Waylon looked tiny. He looked like the kind of person who was constantly searching for a chair to rest in, like an old man. His youth was only given away by his face, even though his expression was that of someone at wit's end. At the time, Miles had wondered if he had a similar exhaustion about himself.

Now he's certain he does. 

Waylon shifts his weight to his uninjured leg, and even that slight movement seems to pain him. "Sorry," he says quietly, and his eyes are worn at the corners. "You know I'll ask again tomorrow."

Miles does know. Waylon's been heckling him for going on a month now. It started a week or so after they wound up in this place. Waylon  _ isn't _ what he wants to keep saying no to, he recognizes that. The whistleblower isn't what he's supposed to hate. 

But he'll hate him anyway.

* * *

More than anything, Miles thinks he's scared.

He isn't sure of what. Maybe himself.  _ Definitely himself.  _ Murkoff is gone, but the people who fostered it aren't. He could probably snap Waylon like a twig if it came down to it, and anyway, he doubts the man has any bad intentions. Still, how long did he hide beneath Murkoff before biting the bullet and sending out that damned email? What  _ deity _ told him to listen to a burning bush?

He knows Waylon regrets it. He's told him enough times for it to be undoubtable. It took him away from his wife, his kids… the only things Mount Massive took from Miles were his fingers and his peace of mind.

It gave him the Walrider.

In all honesty, he hadn't known what he expected, but it wasn't this. It wasn't for his body to stitch itself back together and then operate as if nothing was wrong. It really is just a machine, isn't it? He hadn't been exposed to the Engine for long - so small a moment it's hardly even worth mentioning - and maybe that's why the Walrider stays dormant. He doesn't have the programming to communicate with it.

He'd be an idiot if he said he didn't want it to stay that way.

* * *

The only thing celestial about _the_ _Walrider_ was the pedestal those Gospel of Sand worshippers put it on. That, and the murders Billy Hope had so righteously commanded of it - Mount Massive wasn't Sodom, and Murkoff wasn't Gomorahh - but Miles hadn't dared look back at either when he left those ruins burning. 

* * *

"Do you- …do you want to have lunch with me?"

What would happen if he said yes?

_ "No." _

* * *

Humanity, for whatever reason, has wanted little more than to elevate itself to godly levels of power. But Miles has seen what that kind of power will do, not just at Mount Massive. He's had other jobs. He's seen other horrors. 

The point is, just because people are  _ made in God's image  _ doesn't mean they're gods themselves. 

Waylon understands better than anyone else could, yet even he falters at mention of the Walrider. At what it can  _ do. _ And Miles doesn't plan on ever wheeling it out like some one-trick pony to show him. He doesn't plan on showing it to anybody, let alone Park himself.

Maybe Mount Massive had been nothing other than a sign that Murkoff's time was up, but that feels too undermining to what that riot  _ (massacre) _ had been, and Miles immediately scrubs the thought from his mind. No, Murkoff was slaughtered  _ because  _ of Mount Massive. And to an extent, so was he.

But he wasn't the only survivor. Not by a long shot. 

Would it be right to claim that Waylon was a victim? Would it be fair for him to keep thinking about all of this as Waylon's fault, if that is the case?

He knows the whistleblower isn't what he should be angry at, but it's the easiest.

* * *

"I just- …I just want to be  _ normal _ again."

Miles could slap him.  _ Isn't that the American dream, _ he wants to retort, as vitriolically as he can. But instead he spits out, "How could anyone be fucking normal after what we saw? What's that even supposed to look like?"

Waylon draws himself in like he can hide from it all, and the first word that comes to Miles' head to describe it is  _ pitiful.  _ Waylon can flaunt the wounds in his leg and his mind all he wants, like Christ revealing the scars that ran thick through his palms, but Miles won't buckle to the scapegoat routine. 

"I miss my family, Miles," Waylon murmurs, so quiet Miles would've thought he wasn't meant to hear had Waylon not said his name. "I miss being able to  _ sleep _ at night." He takes in a deep breath, while his eyes stay focused on the ground. "Don't you?"

_ Yes,  _ Miles thinks. Yes, he misses being able to sleep at night. His family is estranged, but a small, hopelessly childish part of himself misses them too. Sometimes it feels like the only place left for him to truly find rest is in a grave. And that's assuming the Walrider would let him  _ die. _

He won't tell Waylon any of that, though. He doesn't tell Waylon anything. Waylon's the cause of it, after all. And maybe it's unreasonable of him to blame him to the level that he does, but if Waylon wants to be seen as Messianic, then by _God,_ Miles will crucify him. 

* * *

"Why don't you  _ hate me?"  _

"Who said I didn't."

_ "Miles." _

Waylon doesn't know when to quit, does he? He says his name like a prayer. Like he can beg forgiveness for what he's done. 

The Walrider was revered like a god. Miles knows it never was. 

Waylon can throw his prayers somewhere else. 

"What- …what do you think of me? Honestly."

"I think-" Miles snarls, before immediately pulling back. He can't hurl unfounded insults at the man, no matter how much he may want to. "I think," he starts again, quieter, and yes, he knows what he wants to say, "I think you're a martyr who never got burned. I think when you sent that email, you knew they'd find out, and what that meant, but you did it anyway, and then when you had to deal with the fallout of your actions instead of kicking back and dying you felt miserable. The whole time you were in that place you wished it'd just _happen,_ didn't you?" He laughs, but it burns like salt in the back of his throat, and the air between them sours. "You don't have the guts to kill yourself, but you don't really want to die, either, even though you think it's the easy way out. I think you're a mess, Park. I think you're pathetic."

There's nothing. Nothing between them. And then Waylon slowly unfurls, like a wild animal seeing a city for the first time. He looks floored.

"Oh," Waylon murmurs, so low Miles isn't even sure it was intentional. He takes in a breath, even while every inch of his body is shaking, and as he stands out of his chair he whispers a dull, monotonous  _ thank you,  _ and he leaves. 

Was it in the Old Testament that God is so infamously regarded as cruel?

* * *

Waylon might have a savior complex, and if he does, then what does that make Miles? He can feel the Walrider crawling beneath his skin like an ant colony, like chips of ice needling through his veins, through his heart - he's no martyr. Neither of them are, because who did Waylon save?

Miles couldn't even save himself.

* * *

"Do you want to have lunch with me?" Waylon asks, wincing the whole time as if Miles might reach out and hit him. 

He didn't think Waylon would ever speak to him again. Why did that scare him?

* * *

He'll never be the same, he knows that. Mount Massive stripped him down and violated him. For Waylon, it might all be in the past, but for Miles - the Walrider will always be in him, won't it? 

* * *

"Do you- do you think there was even a point? There's probably another Mount Massive out there somewhere, a company like Murkoff can't be destroyed… should I even have _ bothered?" _

Miles sighs, and he can feel it brush cold against his lungs. It sits like water in his chest, and if he never spoke again, he thinks he'd drown in it. "I think… that's up to you, Park. And it's not like it was totally useless. The project at Mount Massive? It's done. It ends with me."

Waylon looks skeptical, but Miles doesn't need him to believe - not in anything other than him, at least. 

* * *

"My head is killing me," he says. And then he can't help but laugh, because maybe it is. 

Waylon's staring at him with some sort of abject horror. It's clear that this is a face he's worn too many times. He's so pale. 

What would they be, without each other? What would they be if they'd never met?

* * *

Miles thinks he wanted to die, after he first got away from Mount Massive. Most of it is a blur, probably because the Walrider was fresh in him and had just enough juice left to take the reins for a little while - the only thing that really sticks out is that he didn't feel  _ alive. _

He isn't even sure if he feels alive now. All these months later. 

Has he been whittled down to a blade? Is he just a core of a person, all the fluff, all the details and intricacies and soft parts - have they all been burned away? He feels like only the most essential parts of him made it out of that place. Only what could help him survive, and the rest of it - the rest of it was left with his stolen fingers, to rot in some forgotten corner like garbage.

Does he even want them back?

* * *

"I should've  _ died." _ Waylon's eyes are large, and his hands are thin and shaking against his lap. "I should've killed myself, or- or I should've been killed by someone else-" He lets out a long, wet sigh, one that Miles can practically  _ see _ the despair of. "Maybe I still ought to." 

Miles scoffs, but it's harsh in his chest and he sees Waylon cringe. "Don't be an idiot. Somehow, I don't think you'd find what you're looking for in the afterlife."

Maybe Miles is only saying that because he knows he wouldn't either. 

* * *

"Miles-"

"I'll eat lunch with you, Park. If it'll get you to shut up."

* * *

That place took what little civility Miles had and turned it on its head. He feels closer to animal than person, most days. Too undomesticated.

How is he supposed to live the way everyone else lives, _mundanely, _when every time he closes his eyes all he can see is blood and bone and flies and Chris Walker getting torn apart by the same _thing _hibernating inside him now; Trager, _gnawing,_ prying his fingers with those dull shears and then getting squeezed to death like an overripe lemon while he watched in fucking _pleasure_ _-_ how can he exchange niceties and go to work and make small talk, God forbid make friends - how is he supposed to_ live?_

* * *

Miles knows one day he and Waylon will be fit enough to pick up what little remains of their lives. But for now they aren't, and Miles thinks they need each other. Maybe they always will, because who else will be able to look at Miles' hands and  _ know  _ what happened; why Waylon flinches like a startled deer whenever he hears the word  _ darling. _

One day, maybe enough nights and hours and memories will be packed between all of this, to the point that Mount Massive won't be the first place Miles goes to when he closes his eyes, and when he wakes up in cold sweats, the thrum of the Walrider underneath his skin won't make him feel like a ticking bomb. 

Maybe one day he'll finally be able to forgive Waylon for something that wasn't either of their faults. 

Maybe one day, Miles thinks.

But not for now.

  
  


_ "How long, Lord?  _

_ wilt thou hide thyself for ever?  _

_ shall thy wrath burn like fire? _

_ Remember how short my time is:  _

_ wherefore hast thou made all men in vain?" _

_ _ \- Psalm 89:46-47 _ _

**Author's Note:**

> title's from exodus 3:14.


End file.
